Question

I am using primefaces 3.2, i have a problem while using a thread in JSF. I couldn’t get a reference to the current FacesContext from that thread.

How to get a reference to that context inside that thread.

Answer 1

The current FacesContext is stored in a static thread-local variable. Servlet containers use a specific thread to process each request/response that arrives to the container so, storing the FacesContext in a thread-local variable ensures that there is just one instance per request processing lifecycle, which is how it should be.

When you try to obtain a reference to a FacesContext from another thread what happens is, since the it’s stored as a thread-local variable and since your new thread didn’t initialized it yet: you obtain a null reference.

If you want/need a faces context in another new thread the only possible way is to create a new context instance by means of the FacesContextFactory. However you will need a reference to a HttpServletRequest, a HttpServletResponse and a ServletContext to instantiate it (and I guess you won’t be able to get valid references to those objects from a separate thread).